In 2021, director James Rich made Follower, an hour-long film in which three friends on a backpacking trip found themselves stalked by a mysterious individual recording their every move.
A year after surviving this brutal attack, Heather (Revell Carpenter) and Riley (Molly Leach) have survived and once again find themselves struggling to survive as a dark web cult has descended upon them and wants to destroy them live and streaming for the whole world — or at least those that follow influencers — to see.
Over the last few years, movies where young adults return home to settle the affairs of their dead parents have seemed to dominate streaming movies. This year, it seems like influencers being stalked and killed is the new idea that creatives are tackling.
This has definite tones of You’re Next with the animal-masked home invaders bringing weapons into the home filled with people that you pretty much can’t wait to get wiped out. I dig the papier-mache-looking visages that they wear, however, and obviously, creatives like Rich are attracted to this influencer slasher sub-genre because not only is it such a part of our daily online life, but like I said above, you don’t want to admit just how much you’d like to some of these people deal with events like this movie. You just don’t want to say that out loud because, well, it makes you a horrible person. A more horrible person whose entire life is spent in front of a camera creating a false reality that no normal person can live up to and which causes people to unfairly judge themselves? That debate would take longer than this movie and some words about it can figure out.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
Directed and written by Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr., Cinnamon is all about Jodi (Hailey Kilgore), who starts the movie working in a gas station and dreaming of being a singer. A cowboy comes in and asks if he can use the bathroom, followed by a man in a motorcycle helmet who asks her to empty out the register. The cowboy tries to play hero and gets shot right in the face, spraying blood everywhere. As for the thief, he ends up being in Jodi’s bathtub, because he’s her boyfriend Eddie (David Iacono) who will do anything to make get her to Los Angeles.
The problem? Her boss Wally (Damon Wayans) is in deep with a crime family led by Mama (Pam Grier) and one of their members is the cowboy who just bled out in Wally’s gas station. That’s when we realize that this movie may start in blacksploitation but will end up feeling like one of those Tarantino-style films that came out so often in the 90s.
That’s not a bad thing. Wayans is divisive in this, as you could see his over the top performance as the wrong note to strike in an otherwise dark drama. But it worked for me and it’s always good to see him in a movie. Grier is great, communicating only through gesture and motion in this. She conveys that she’s in charge and that you could pay the price for crossing her with just the simplest of looks.
I’m not used to Tubi movies having budgets or casts like this, to be perfectly honest.
Directed by Fernando González Gómez and Raúl Cerezo, who wrote the script with Rubén Sánchez Trigos and Javier Trigales, The Elderly starts with an older woman falling off a balcony to her death and then deals with dementia, aging and the elderly telling their children that they plan on killing them.
Yeah. Get ready.
Manuel (Zorion Eguileor) is the grandfather who faces life without his wife of fifty years. His son Mario (Gustavo Salmerón) would rather his father stay with him than a home, no matter what his wife Lena (Irene Anula) wants. Meanwhile, his teenage daughter Naia (Paula Gallego) starts to see the spirit of her grandmother. It starts slow, but by the time things increase in tension and the temperate increases in Madrid, every old person could be a threat.
What is it with everyone doing the Ari Aster thing where old people get naked and we’re supposed to be creeped out by it? Let me screw your head up. Your once supple skin and gorgeous looks will one day face aging and if you’re turned off now, you’ll be turned off then. Get over it. We are our souls, not this whole fiction suit we wear in this reality.
That said — this movie is gorgeous and freaked me out with its ever-rising tides of fascism and high temperatures. It hits a lot close to home, as my father dealt with early dementia before he died last year, at times thinking he was sixteen and wondering how he had a son so old.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
James Glickenhaus — Suicide Cult, The Exterminator, The Soldier, The Protector — brings us this story of Bobby McBain, a soldier who brings together his old buddies to battle a Colombian dictator.
Christopher Walken plays McBain, which has nothing to do with The Simpsons except that this movie and that show got into legal wrangling which led to the cartoon calling McBain by his real name, Rainier Wolfcastle.
Besides a role for a young Luis Guzmán and an appearance by MTV VJ Karen “Duff” Duffy in a crack den, this movie also has Michael Ironsides, Steve James from The Delta Forceand American Ninja (amongst so many other incredible movies) and María Conchita Alonso. It’s kind of mindblowing to see a star the level of Walken in a movie with Ironsides and James. It kind of also makes me deliriously happy.
Santos (Chick Vennera) attempts to lead a people’s revolt in Colombia, but he fails and is executed. The people’s revolution won’t stop, so his sister Christina (María Conchita Alonso) travels the whole way to New York to find McBain (Christopher Walken). Once, back in Nam, her brother rescued McBain. Now, she wants him to get her some revenge. How do you do that? Well, get together some old war buddies, kill some drug dealers, take their cash and then kill the President of Columbia (Victor Argo).
Originally titled McBain’s War and McBain’s Seven, you can dazzle your friends by telling that everything in Colombia is actually the Phillippines.
McBain is now available on blu ray from Synapse. It comes with audio commentary from director James Glickenhaus and film historian Chris Poggiali, the original theatrical trailer and an all-new remixed 5.1 surround sound created specifically for this release. The original 2.0 theatrical stereo mix is also included. You can get it from MVD.
June 25: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Hixploitation! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
Will Zens made some wild movies. There was Capture That Capsule in 1961 that cashed in on the space race, then The Starfighters which is about F-16s and not space. He also made an earlier Nam movie, The Shores of Hell in 1966, but by the next year he’d be making less serious efforts — in a good way — like jukebox musical The Road to Nashville (which has Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Portner Wagoner, Johnny Cash and more in its cast) and Hell On Wheels (which has John Ashley and Marty Robbins, as the singer also dabbled in NASCAR racing). The same year that Zens made this, he also made Trucker’s Woman, which played double bills with this movie and has a subliminal pepperoni pizza image in it.
Written by W. Henry Smith and Joseph A. Alvarez (who wrote Redneck Miller, too), this has a federal agent named Jeff Wilson (Don Jones) come to Barefoot County to clean up all the moonshine before finding out that every woman in town is like an angel descended from some redneck heaven.
General Film Distributors carried this beyond its Carolinas roots to states like Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Tennessee. It was made by the Preacherman Corporation, which, as you can imagine, also made Preacherma and the sequel, Preacherman Meets Widderwoman.
Of the cast, probably you might know Sherry Robinson, as she was Lisa in The Gruesome Twosome, while Jeff McKay would be on shows like Tales of the Golden Monkey, Magnum P.I. and JAG. He and Jacquelyn Pyle also did the radio ads for Axe.
I’ve had the poster for this movie for years and you know, that artwork is about a million times better than the actual movie, which is really as it should be.
Also: When I get down, I sometimes think back to the cycle of Southern and rural culture taking over media, then the powers that be getting rid of them, then it happening all over again. Just witness the cycle of CBS canceling the Beverly Hillbillies universe, then the Dukes ten years later and today, so much of reality TV has stories set in non-urban places. Demographics are always the culprit for why it all goes away, but then everything has a cycle. A time to be born, a time to die, a time for movies about stock cars and moonshine, I pray it’s not too late.
Here are some more shorts from the Chattanooga Film Festival.
Ringworms (2022): A sinister cult looks to gain occult power through cursed worms and find the perfect host within Abbie, a young woman with commitment issues hours away from receiving a marriage proposal from the boyfriend she doesn’t even think she likes. Faye Nightingale, who plays the lead, is absolutely supercharged awesomeness; so is the direction by Will Lee. A splatter relationship movie that ends with a double blast of garbage disposal and black vomit mania, then topped by a head graphically splitting open to reveal a hand? Oh man — I loved every moment. I want more. So much more. Also: There’s a cult!
Kickstart My Heart (2022): Director and writer Kelsey Bollig survived a near-death experience to tell this story of, well, a near-death experience. Lilly (Emma Pasarow) must survive three levels of living hell to return from the near-dead which ends up looking like scenes from horror movies and Mortal Kombat, which I can totally endorse.
You have to love when someone tells an incredibly personal story and does it with fight scenes involving ninjas and demons. More people should follow the model that this film has set, but then again, this is so original and well-done, they’ll find themselves wanting in comparison.
Shallots and Garlic (2022): Directed and written by Andrea Nirmala Widjajanto, Bawang Merah Bawang Putih is about what happens when sisters Nur and Karina reunite for their grandparents’ wedding. as the family partakes in the dinner ritual of numpeng, Karina blames Nur for her allergic reaction to garlic. Their grandmother only adds to the tension as their mother tries her best to bring harmony to the table. Despite the culture that you come from, the nervousness that comes from family situations is universal. This tells that story in a way that looks gorgeous but shows how alike we all can be.
Greetings (2023): I never saw this coming and I was floored by this short. Trish is a shy cubicle dweller in an office that’s big on birthdays. She hardly knows anyone, so when she has 15 minutes to write a birthday card from the heart, she makes the wish of the card reader come true. Soon, her birthday notes are in high demand, as she has the power to give love and money to people who never saw themselves with these high commodities. But when everyone forgets her birthday and she’s mistreated by middle management, she takes her pen and a stack of kitten cards to deal out the fates that people truly deserve.
Director and writer Stephanie Bencin has delivered a knock-out short here packed with character quirks remembered throughout and the right touch of absurdist humor that makes this one that I’ll be remembering long after this festival — and several after it — is over.
The Lizard Laughed (2022): Based on the comic from Noah Van Sciver, this short was adapted and directed by Allen Cordell. It tells the tale of Harvey (Sky Elobar), a man with no true responsibilities who meets his strange son Nathan (Jared Boghosian). As they explore the Laughing Lizard rock formation, Nathagets the courage to ask his father why he abandoned their family. It’s tense and strange and wonderful, a mix of well-shot live action and some beautiful animation that creates an unexpected twenty minutes of joy. I plan on seeking out the comic book now to see how close the filmmaker got to capturing it and if there’s any more of the story to discover. You can learn more at the official Twitter page.
Black Tea (2022): Directed and written by Laura McQuay, this invites us to watch as a lonely Victorian widow (Allyn Carrell) brews tea and casts spells, all to hope to find a long-lost love (Matthew Simmons). This looks absolutely gorgeous, like a painting come to life and feels so well-planned and art directed. From the social media for this film, I’ve seen the storyboards and am astounded by how tight they are and how almost every shot from them ended up in the finished film. Like watching a work of art painted before your eyes. I watched this more than once as I was so taken by its look, its music and its closing moment. You can learn more on the official Facebook and Twitter pages.
Farmer Ed (2022): After isolated farmer Ed (E. James Ford) makes a shocking discovery on his land, he tries to keep it a secret from his wife Birdie (Samantha Nugent). But how long can you keep a floating brain from the person you are closest to? Director and writer Azwan Badruzaman has a great eye for setting up shots and pacing, while the cast is absolutely perfect. I’d love to see this as a full-length, as I feel like there’s so much more to explore and my appetite was only briefly sated by this great effort. There are a series of quick cuts as we see the being within the bar study Birdie that are some of the best put together scenes I’ve seen in a short. Can’t wait to see more! You can learn more on the official Facebook and Twitter pages.
Picture Day (2022): Director and writer Kelly Pike has crafted this story of Casey (Oona Yaffe), a girl who must go through picture day at the school located on a military base. From battling with her mother over earrings to her father trying to make things make more sense at the dinner table, this photo session seems like a never-ending source of stress and worry. Do we ever appear as we dreamed that we would or how we wish to look in the photos that capture just a second of distortion of who we are in our heads? Picture Day is a slice of life that ends in fantasy and I for one enjoyed every moment.
Canal (2022): A woman (Suri Jackson) must cross a bridge as she walks home, but she feels the pull of staring into the water below. This pulls her through a portal into another world, a maze where she must escape what has dragged her into this new world while gathering her own understanding of it. Director Will Rahilly wrote this along with star Jackson and Anna Boskovski, Will Rahilly, Aaron Rodriguez and Giovanni Saldarriaga; the results are absolutely awe-inspiring, as there are moments that play with perspective and even the direction of the camera, tilting and changing the world around its heroine. Black and white has never felt quite so expressive as the moments I spent within this world. I am truly wowed by what I have seen.
The Five Fingers of a Dog (2022): This was probably the movie I was the most looking forward to in this collection and, sadly, the one I was most let down by. You remember how exciting Fatal Frames seemed from the description and box art? Yeah, that. A so-called “gothic neo-giallo,” which means that this takes the masked killer, the strange weapons, the POV and the kills — well, they get way too graphic, so that puts this in the slasher genre, but man, why quibble at this stage of the game — of the form and puts them on video with out of synch dialogue that feels more like being silly than emulating actual Italian to English dubs, as well as a filming style that’s somewhere in-between digital video and a filter that makes it look like degraded film, except, you know, most gialli actually look gorgeous. Nice lighting, off-kilter camera angels and weirdness for weirdness’ sake do not a good giallo make. At least Kyle Tierce’s soundtrack is lovely. I really wanted to like this film by Charlie Compton and Justin Landsman, but when you call your own movie disreputable, it’s kind of like picking your own nickname and forcing us to call you by it. And I tried, I honestly did, watching this more than twice to try and see if I was just off. I wish that I could have loved it and not feel this disappointment.
Likeness (2022): Kaitlyn (Mary Rose Branick)’s mother (Virginia Newcomb) has been missing for four months and no one seems to be working all that hard to find her. That’s why she’s created a digital AI copy of her, using all of her social media posts, to help her find out exactly where her real mother is. Director and writer David A. Flores has created a film that starts with an interesting concept that really could happen in the future and explores the emotions that surround loss and how even all the technology in the world may not be able to heal the wounds left by someone. I also found it so fascinating how Kaitlyn can speak more honestly with the representative of her mother than she could to her flesh and blood parent. The ending is really well handled, too.
When You’re Gone (2022): In the midst of heartbreak, a writer-turned-party girl (Kristin Noriega, who also directed and wrote this) learns what it means to face pain, as her issues suddenly become moot when she becomes hunted by a subterranean mother and its horrific progeny. Is what’s happening real? Or is this just how emotional agony can make you feel? Either way, this has so much goop dripping into nearly every frame of its action, as well as a heroine not afraid to get her hands dirty and her teeth bloody by fighting back against whatever these creatures are that have her trapped. The elevator to stairwell transition scenes are dizzying and I feel like this needs to be a full-length to expand on each character and learn more.
The Waiting Room or Eggs In Purgatory (2023): Maya (Lyla Stern) died young at just seventeen. Since then, she’s been sitting in Purgatory for eternity in the hopes of learning where her final place in the afterlife will be. She becomes friends with Dean (Pavel Paunov), a young man who has lived a life on Earth very close to her own. But untold millennia of waiting for what’s next has gotten to Maya, which isn’t helped when the keeper of Limbo, Eugene (Colin Heffernan), loses his list of names which may strand her in nowhere forever. This really feels like the way I used to talk in my youth, when I would try to round off infinity and spent hours pouring over song lyrics in the hope of finding something, anything of meaning in this place. Director and writer Madeline Blair captures that and commits it to this film.
Cafe Cinatriz (2022): Director Jordan Bahat has created a story that arises from the last few years of our lives. During that time, Max experienced the loss of his best friend, yet tonight at Cafe Cicatriz, he finally has the opportunity for an actual authentic human connection with Lourdes. He hopes that with time, he can show her his true self, once he builds the courage he needs and perhaps together they can create an actual relationship. But when the word comes out that masks can be removed, he knows that he can’t show her what is underneath his face covering. Because, well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?
The Spirit Became Flesh (2023): In a town in Alabama that few would know the name of, Sam (Christopher Dietrick) has come back home to see his sister Lilah (Chloe Baldwin), She is all that holds him here, as his parents are dead and he’s built a life in New York City. This place has always been religious, but Sam is shocked to learn that they now slavishly worship a creature in the woods that they believe is the Holy Spirit. Whatever it truly is, it demands ritual and sacrifice. Can Sam break the cycles of this religious world he no longer belongs in? And more importantly, should he? Director and writer Jesse Parker Aultman has created something really special here. You can learn more on the official site for the film.
The Stewards (2022): In this future-placed short by director and writer Hannah Eaton, a virtual reality conservationist named Avery keeps having the same dream, night after night, which makes her question the isolation that she lives within, the way that she lives her life and perhaps even the nature of reality itself.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
Instead, this is a film that comes on the heels of Scream and, perhaps more to the point, the Urban Legend series. It was the passion project of writer and co-director Martin Kunert (who would make the MTV horror anthology series Fear) and producer Eric Manes (who wrote and produced 3000 Miles to Graceland; he also produced Phat Beach in case you cared). In fact, this was originally called either Fear or All American Campfire Horror Stories. The other directors of segments include Matt Cooper and David Semel, whose career has mainly been in TV (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Watchmen, Heroes).
Released by New Line Cinema in 1997, this movie inspired the Bollywood film Darna Mana Hai and while it’s been released on DVD, it’s never made the leap to blu ray.
It starts with the story of the Hook, which has been used in a multitude of movies (it shows up in everything from Meatballsand He Knows You’re Alone to Lovers Laneand Final Exam, but its message of teenage sex equals death is pretty much the engine that powers every slasher ever made). James Marsden and Amy Smart are in this opening, which is something that you’ll notice about Campfire Tales: it’s packed with talent that would have great careers after it was made.
This leads us to the connective story which is — did you guess? — a campfire tale, as Cliff (Jay R. Ferguson, who is now on The Conners) wrecks a van on the way home from a concert, leading his friends Lauren (Christine Taylor, who is probably best known from the Brady Bunch movies), Eric (Christopher Masterson, Malcolm in the Middle) and Alex (Kim Murphy, Houseguest) to light a fire until help passes by. They start telling the stories that form the rest of the movie.
“The Honeymoon” has Ron Livingston (Office Space) and Jennifer Macdonald as a married couple being stalked on their RV wedding vacation. “People Can Lick Too,” which is one of my favorite urban legends, is updated (well, to 1997) to have internet chat rooms. And the final story, “The Locket,” is less friend of a friend story and more time travel slasher with another Roseanne-related actor (the late Glenn Quinn, who was Mark) romancing a mute woman (The Real World star Jacinda Barrett, who is also in Urban Legends: Final Cut) and being chased by her ax-carrying monster of a father.
The film ends dark Wizard of Oz style, as everyone except for Cliff disappears as paramedics attempt to save him. As the camera pulls away from the accident, everyone from the stories plays the roles of the emergency crew members and, you guessed it, a hook is on the door of the car, the real cause of the crash.
Starting with Carrie, Stephen King was adapted by more than fifty directors and eighty or more films and series were filmed. The beauty of King On Screen is that it brings together nearly every living director who worked on these films, including Tom Holland (The Langoliers, Thinner), Mick Garris (The Stand, Sleepwalkers), Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist), Taylor Hackford (Dolores Claiborne), Mike Flanagan (Dr. Sleep, Gerald’s Game), Mark Lester (Firestarter), Mikael Håfström (1408), Josh Boone (The Stand), Tom McLoughlin (Sometimes They Come Back), Lewis Teague (Cujo, Cat’s Eye), Fraser C. Heston (Needful Things), Craig R. Baxley (Storm of the Century, Rose Red, Kingdom Hospital), Mikael Salomon (Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King), Scott Hicks (Hearts In Atlantis), David Carson (Carrie 2002), John Harrison (Creepshow, Creepshow 2), Zak Hilditch (1922), Greg Nicotero (Shudder’s Creepshow), Vincenzo Natali (In the Tall Grass), Tod Williams (Cell) and so many more.
Director Daphné Baiwir starts this with a sequence that takes you directly into nearly every one of King’s stories. If you love the author, you’ll have so much fun going back in and out of this scene to see how many references you can catch. My wife is a fan, so she was excited to see Jeffrey DeMunn show up, as he was in The Shawshank Redemption, Storm of the Century, The Green Mile and The Mist.
Don’t expect anyone to knock on any of these movies. Well, the movie likes The Shining TV movie more than Kubrick’s, but these are all friends of King. However, if you’re watching this, there’s a significant chance that you don’t have too many bad things to say about any Stephen King movies.
The part of this that I loved the most was the part about Tom Hanks, as Frank Darabont discussed how giving he is to everyone on set.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
I really hope Domino is not Brian De Palma’s last movie. He was not involved in the ADR, the musical recording sessions, the final mix or the color timing of the final print, all elements he would have been obsessed by. He also told The Playlist, “Domino is not my project, I did not write the script. I had a lot of problems in financing. I never experienced such a horrible movie set. A large part of our team has not even been paid yet by the Danish producers. This was my first experience in Denmark and most likely my last.”
He did at least show some excitement for the idea of this movie, saying ““It is the revenge story of a revenge of a cop duo against terrorists who killed another. But the whole political aspect will be very little exploited, the film was more for me a new opportunity to explore a visual narrative. In the film, terrorists are obsessed with the idea that their actions are instantly visible live on the Internet or on TV.”
The movie starts in the midst of Copenhagen police officers Christian Toft (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Lars Hansen (Søren Malling) dealing with a domestic disturbance. Hansen handcuffs a man covered in blood, thinking he’s the abuser and Toft goes upstairs to check on the victim. Leaving his gun at home, he takes Toft’s and finds a flat filled with bomb material and guns, as well as one man already dead. Downstairs, the attacker breaks free and slices Hansen’s throat. Toft chases the man across the rooftops with both falling and being knocked out. As he loses his touch with reality, the cop watches three men take away the man he was chasing.
That man’s fingerprints belong to Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney). He’s a Libyan Special Forces soldier whose parents were killed by ISIS leader Salah Al-Din (Mohammed Azaay). He’s been trying to get to the terrorist leader — who often films and posts his attacks on the internet — and has already killed one of his soldiers. Toft wants revenge, but is suspended and stuck being questioned by internal affairs inspector Alex Boe (Cance van Houten) for not having his service weapon.
But the plot gets more twisted, as CIA agent Joe Martin (Guy Pearce) has taken Tarzi and his family, forcing him to work with him to get his own revenge on Al-Din. Now, they have to stop the terrorist before he escapes to North Africa. How much more twisted? Boe is pregnant with Toft’s partner’s child and wants revenge too.
It all ends with a terrorist bombing inside a bull fight arena, crosses and double crosses and a downer ending. What else can we expect from De Palma, even if he didn’t get to finish this?
The one moment that his hand is obvious is during an internet assisted assassination on the red carpet. If every part of this movie could feel like that, it would have been a success.
Brian De Palma shot this twenty-minute short about an optical art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965. Artists such as David Hockney, Jeffrey Steele, Mon Levinson, Al Lesley, Josef Albers, Larry Rivers and Marisol appear, as well as architect Philip Johnson, curator William Seitz and actress Pamela Tiffin, who mostly acted in Italy in films including The Fifth Cord and Kill Me, My Love!
It’s interesting to think about whether De Palma liked his subject or not, because you can almost see that he’s making fun of the critics and the art scene of the time. Or is he just an impartial observer and that’s how they all really are?
So much of De Palma’s films play with optical illusion, so there’s also the intrigue of seeing him film this art and wonder how it would show up later in his more celebrated movies.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.